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I abhor the dull incessant drip drip drip of existence

23 December 2016

We all have a certain level of background noise in our lives. It's the set-pieces we glaze over as we float back and forth the day's stage, the dreary routines that we go about doing without sparing it much thought.

I first heard of the phrase in the title from Elementary-

Now I think if I were to use drugs again, it would be, in fact, an anticlimax. It would be a surrender to the drip, drip, drip of existence.
- Sherlock Holmes

Drip, drip, drip. It's a perfect descriptor for many of us, I would think. That life becomes a slow trickling, a dull incessant annoyance rather than the vibrant explosion that it should be.

I abhor the dull incessant drip, drip, drip of existence, but I fear that's all that my life has to offer me. I am petrified at the possibility of my life becoming a cheap imitation of life. I live in fear of not living up to myself, in fear that the sun will set upon me before I sail to the horizon.

The truth is, I will never reach that horizon and I, or anyone else, will never chase down the sun. My question then becomes this- why do we do anything when nothing we do would matter?

I've always been a challenge-seeker, always stared at the next mountain before me and charged straight at it. I would reach the peak, stopping for a moment, only to find myself already bloodthirsty for the next mountain, the next challenge, the next terrible struggle.

Why do I fight, when at the end of the day I am only going to seek out the next battle? Why fight when at the end of the battle the board resets and the rooks and pawns all go back to its original spot, no indication of the struggles it has just gone through?

How does one find comfort and solace in the mundane? How do we sit down amongst the deafening background noises of our lives and still find peace?

I abhor the dull incessant drip drip drip of existence, but I fear that's all my life has to offer me.

As a parting note, I got reminded of this as I was writing this entry.

"What do you think that Hercules would have been if there had not been such a lion, and hydra, and stag, and boar, and certain unjust and bestial men, whom Hercules used to drive away and clear out?

And what would he have been doing if there had been nothing of the kind? Is it not plain that he would have wrapped himself up and have slept?

In the first place, then he would not have been a Hercules, when he was dreaming away all his life in such luxury and case; and even if he had been one what would have been the use of him? And what the use of his arms, and of the strength of the other parts of his body, and his endurance and noble spirit, if such circumstances and occasions had not roused and exercised him?"
- Discourses, Epictetus